In the aftermath of their acclaimed OCEAN RAIN, Echo & The Bunnymen spent a year on hiatus before returning with their eponymous 1987 album, and the time off served them well. The collection features leaner arrangements than its string-laden predecessor, and the hooks stand out sharper than ever on such songs as “Bedbugs and Ballyhoo,” “The Game” and the classic “Lips Like Sugar.” A Top 10 hit in the band's native U.K.

We haven’t really done much in the way of compiling video playlists for Rhino.com, but there’s no time like the present to remedy that situation, and we thought we’d kick things off with one that spotlights some videos from the days when MTV actually still stood for “Music Television.”

(Yes, we know it’s an overplayed joke. But we also know it’s still an accurate one.)

Some of these videos are from the earliest days of the network, while others are from a few years farther down the line, but they’re all very much from the ‘80s, a.k.a. the glory years of music video. Some of them were MTV staples in their day, like a-ha’s “Take on Me” and ZZ Top’s “Legs” – hey, we just took it from A to Z! – while some may have escaped your notice until they turned up on 120 Minutes several years later, like Echo and the Bunnymen’s “The Killing Moon” or The Smiths’ “This Charming Man.” If you lived through the ‘80s, though, then you’ll no doubt enjoy reminiscing about that time Milton Berle hung out with Ratt, or when Devo introduced one generation to the Rolling Stones while another generation decided that they’d just heard musical blasphemy at its worst, or when Al Jarreau actually got airplay on MTV.

Ian McCulloch, frontman for Echo and the Bunnymen, hits the big 5-5 today, which means that he was only 25 years old when Rik from The Young Ones wrote him a letter which began with the words, “Dear Mr. Echo…” (Too obscure a reference for you, kids? Not to worry: here you go. After all, that’s what YouTube’s for, innit?)

Born in Liverpool in 1959, McCulloch didn’t start his musical career as the frontman for Echo and the Bunnymen, but they were definitely the band that kickstarted his success. Prior to that, however, he somewhat notoriously spent “about an hour” as a member of The Crucial Three, a trio which also featured Julian Cope (The Teardrop Explodes) and Pete Wylie (The Mighty Wah!). In Mad World: An Oral History of New Wave Artists and Songs That Defined the 1980s, by Lori Majewski and Jonathan Bernstein, McCulloch summed up the experience in typically forthright fashion: